genesis

It's enough to make you dizzy. It's enough to steal your breath. Spun along some unseen line, the blunt trajectory of resolute distance lit from either side. You couldn't steer clear with all the room laid bare. You couldn't escape it with forever for a head start. They place their equations, they mumble their spells, spilling salt and alchemy along the least trace of a trail. Split the river or learn to ride it. Blaze the path or learn to find your way through ash and hooves and smoke.

You follow your intuition long enough, you learn to believe any tale. Trust your gut too often, you are bound to swallow some shit. There are always reasons, even when the answers are wrong. There are always roads left open, paths crafted from all the walking away. There are always choices that bleed a few close questions, always some place where penitence would be the wiser way. So much made of the mysterious worker, this croupier daring bets. So many vain spittings of some name the word wears down to the sound of missing teeth.

You can't help but believe the tales that taught you your tongue. They twist and turn, wearing down, pulling inside out. They adorn some ritual, whether prayer or the reason why. They unfold from your very breath, and without wing or flesh they fly. So you strive to catch the toe of your maker, pressed from clay or risen from the writhing dust. So you build some map, or put some model under glass. Flung so far, gone so fast we reach towards our fabricated tomorrows, watching the vastness yawn on and on. Lost so often, dead so long, you long for some spark in the night.

false positives

It isn't only the light that loses me, sticking to these corners, playing the right peg. Shadows congeal into shade and ether, the weight of a color, the press of light.  The cookie-cutter ideologue whispers to the airwaves, the rhythm of schoolyard secrets growing into that tell-tale march, boots on the backstairs, shots ringing in the night. Each hue huddles at once, cheek to cheek dancing with the dusk. I pause and I clear my throat, as if I had something to say.

Dogs bark and traffic rumbles, the sound of a slow throttle rattling off the glass. The hour has the ease of puzzle pieces, each shape fit to find another picture. I allude to the angles, chant all my false positives while idling towards the west. This resolve that dissolves with a glass of water. This obstruction measured as a piece of pie. It seems as likely as any answer. As probable as the next prayer.

The sun sinks bright, pushing all its shadows through me. The light leans low, making markers from fresh blinded eyes. The children vote for one last racket, a stippled din left to fend against the reaching night. Paws scuff and wings scatter, a wind falls along all the right ideas, aligning the binds of belief. I knew that it was there for the saying. I knew there was a witness to vouch for every lie. What happens next just argument and evidence. What happens next waiting to be seen.

rate of change

All at once I am here again, by trip of tongue and sleight of hand. I see the morning star as the night unwinds, and realize either eye could be right, left alone long enough. A spark to find that midnight road, a mark to hew the lay of the land. Always cut with the abrupt partings, always having to trust the handshake deals and the weight of gaze and word. The stranger waiting at those crossed roads, our crossed stars the magic as it fades.

The sky is sized up, with tree limb partitions. The glittering bluff of constellations, the deeper blur of this vast retreat. Spun out along the remote border of this seething galaxy we learn to move with the infinite, so very careful where we step. Abandoned upon this point on the map, we are riven knowing only the speed or the spot. We get lost like this, or something like it. Alone in the skin of some middling feeling, sunk to the bottom  of some diligent atmosphere. Held by heaven against the press of earth.

I light a fire, I draw down smoke. I hesitate in thoughtful suffocation. Chosen paths recognize no accidents, oath bound ways always stuck with their eyes on the road. One moment here, another moment gone. Shadows crawling across each street as day pursues the night. The crow calls down the dusk, the dove finds no respite. Tell me the fable of want and wander, tell me the road from sand to sea. Another season set ablaze, another year folded back into the fields. Peach blossoms alight in the night air, and I cannot tell my heart one thing.

when the weather finds your wounds

I might be the shuffling in the night, I might be that spark of tell-tale light out amongst the trees. The creaking floorboards, the banging pipes. That scent of smoke lingering in the doorway. That shape that vanishes under the burden of proof. I live in that fever of lithe flesh, the evidence kept caged in your thieving heart. I live in that glib explanation that leaps and skulks behind your eyes, the truth that only the two of us could know. I might be shopping in your city. I might be sleeping beneath your stairs, swaddled in dust and webs.

I missed the stars when they worked their shift, I missed the dawn when it broke the night. I know I slept, though all I heard was the television telling its stories. I know I dreamt, though all I recall is the end. I may be mistaken, but I have been wrong before. I may have lost my way, but it could be that its the new one that I want. Now the day is half gone, and I have half a mind to waste the rest away. There is a thought I cannot shake, a notion that won't leave me alone. Only you could know quite what I meant, even when my meaning is mistook. Only you endure all these years in this wilderness away from the work-a-day world.

There is a touch that lingers, giving your skin its reasons. There is a kiss still lit on your lips, burning through all these moods and years. There is a stumble in your journeys, there is a smudge upon the relevant mark on the map. I am wicked, I am base. I am a fool caught in the spill of the scenery, ruined in the sweep of stars. All the worried words and all the doctor's portents and witches spells can not remove the name written in your heart. All your crimes and your sanctimony, all my books and rules, cannot change this scar. The earth will buck and the skies will scream, the roof will come rolling down. I will be beside you in these slips and hesitations. I am with you until the boat finds the bottom of the wide and wandering ocean. I am with you until the wheel stops spinning, rendered in tooth and midnight. Where ever you fall or fly, I am the scar you reach for when the weather finds your wounds.

method

There could always be another pillar, buried deep beneath the one that crumbled. There could always be another chance, just waiting in the wings. That sliver of moon tried to tell my fortune, casting shadows against the wall. That silver of the mirror, replying at first light. I cast my eyes as if there were a distance. I cast my eyes as if my eyes could see. I play the part as best I remember, not a single soul awake. I say my lines a little too loud for the room, remembering the cheap seats.

On the best days I pretend not to remember, or at least that it doesn't bother me when I do. Edit out the broad strokes of fortune, erase the worst that the editing did not remit. The rest of it I could shrug off, a few details left in the dustbin, a few things left to the limits of imagination. Those moments when everything happened, those moments with the slow motion and the sharp cuts. They worry me so hard they became the story. And then I played the part until I forgot I was fifth business. The clown in the galley, the goon lost in the orchestra pit. I forgot the act, I lost the lines. The character was all I kept.

I would say it so for all the world. Make some claim, like I knew one thing. Take the stage away again, dust off the old soft shoe. My style, my schtick, the whole blessed arithmetic of hide and seek. I divine them from memory, I read them from the cards I keep up my sleeves, I lose them and find them again and again. My only story, the entire canon cribbed and gaffed. Leaning towards the limelights, swinging for the moon.

inkling

Just like that it goes from mood to moment. Just like that the day again is new. The sun sops away the tattered tomorrows that never found out how to fix to a frame. For this sentence all the boundless blues of a running tab, all the lit up hints of possibility from the sustain of this phrase. Back and forth from tongue to tooth, then breath and again. The lustrous and dull mechanics of this fleeting translation. Language binding  the language bound.

These brief divinations, the furtive transference of thought into this flood of self and flesh. Bare branches knitting halos in each reflection, words withheld all the stretch of wiring we need. A glancing dance, a drafty sing-along where we all move at once, the spark seeping in through these familiar distances. At once intimate and remote, love and advertisement. Words hung in the very air, as if just the drift will do.

I go about my daily failings, get lost amid the respite of sin. I cross the gap, I break the circle. Story after story falls away as every doorway dwindles. Words take flight and soar towards glory. Words steal wings and go crashing into the obdurate sea. The seasons wait to steal tomorrow from the spell of pale surprise. You can still find me, tripping through some whispered dreaming. You can still catch me scuffing up the dust, there until the thought is gone.

slowburn

I had already forgotten it once it came time to write it down. What original itch worked a hole through my still, what surprise of spark and shine withdrew me from my deepest dreams? The word itself explains away the repartee of conjecture and complaint, forgotten such a long and solemn lull in the conversation. So it began again, blank slate following the blank stare into the unknown. The dim reflection of some mad old man, head bound in tree limbs, eyes like lightning strikes. The sputter of punctuation only breath and heartbeat, here in the country of the setting sun.

You'd surprised at the names I call me, both in the severity and delusion, my gnarled discounting of the news the whole world knows. It isn't as if I deny your guesses, or gild your baser claims. There is no question that I stumbled and plundered through this life, no alibi for all this bile and riot. I swallow the pills, and chew of the notion, day wading away into gathered dusk.  I sulk and I slander, dusk burning a hole towards the night.

There's no excuse but I want you, no telling how long the meaning lies. Even the mirror knows this much, that staggering distance, that tattered limit left. Something I seem to need to tell you, not that there are reasons you would need to hear. Something about you always to remark on, as I rot and plod along. So I reach for you at the least provocation. I reach for you whenever you are not there. Something to say as the day burns down. Something to do once all there is is ash.